Ecommerce marketers occasionally measure the condition of their SEO program by gut feel. There are several gray areas in ecommerce SEO, but its evaluation requires not some hunch, but data. Use the following methods to find out the state of the search engine optimization (SEO) program for your ecommerce website. Although analyzing SEO metrics in many systems will give the clearest idea, remember that the metrics in a platform might not match the numbers in other platforms.
Evaluating SEO
Using enterprise search tools and platforms like seoClarity, Ahrefs, and Searchmetrics is the quickest way to measure SEO performance. Why? Because these assimilate data from many of the following sources, and convert it into easily readable dashboards. Sometimes, you may be able to find an issue without exiting the platform.
Analytics Tools
Data from website analytics tools will be the regularly sought-out source of your SEO KPIs (key performance indicators) namely orders, most significant traffic, and revenue. If these KPIs are working fine, so will be the crawling, indexing and ranking processes, plus attracting clicks off of the (search engine results page) SERP to your website.
The website’s non-SEO aspects like user experience, product assortment, pricing, and others will determine whether or not a searcher does what you want them to. In SEO parlance, this user action is known as a ‘conversion’.
Bear in mind that analytics tools do not provide reliable data on keyword search-queries. Search engines have made the data unavailable back in 2013. Now, analytics software reports almost every keyword as ‘not provided’. What’s worse, the remaining SEO keywords are an unreliable part of the dataset on the whole.
Google Search Console
There is no more reliable source of rankings, impressions and clicks than Google’s Search Console Performance report. The report is limited to search on Google, but the search engine makes up over 90% of organic traffic on almost every ecommerce website.
In Search Console, there are also reports for server errors, indexation, structured data, internal and external linking, sitemaps, etc. It is used to communicate significant details concerning your website, like a manual Google penalty to name one.
Google Ads
The advertising platform offers reporting on Google organic search provided that it is linked with Google Search Console. Google Ads’ ‘Paid & Organic Report’ provides a lot of data concerning the search queries you get impressions for.
For instance, if an ad is shown when you google ‘red shoes’, it will show as a search query in Google Ads’ report, whether or not the organic search result has an impression. In contrast, if it gets an organic search impression, ‘red shoes’ is sure to show in the report in Google Ads, regardless of that advertisement. Using the report is one more method to evaluate your search engine optimization efforts.
Free Search Ranking Tools
As a whole, rankings are among the most useful diagnostics for investigating in what way keyword trends affect organic performance. However, rankings are not a KPI. Clicks on an organic listing are more important, not where that website ranks.
Even so, if you cannot afford any enterprise search tool, and need another opinion about rankings to support Search Console, use a free and limited version of a platform including rankings information.
Ask Somebody
Many people can assess search engine optimization problems for free.
Webmaster Office Hours
Submit your doubts on Google Webmaster Office Hours Hangouts, hosted by the Senior Webmaster Trends Analyst of Google named John Mueller. Check on the calendar of the Webmaster Events to know when the next chat will take place. Several SEO professionals usually take part in the hangouts session, so be there in time to discuss your doubts with them.
Google Webmasters Help Community
Raise an SEO-related question and get answers from members of the community forum, including Google’s workers. That said, you should check the reliability of any person who provides advice there or any other forum for that matter.
Start networking with esteemed SEO professionals regularly by following these pros and retweeting the information they share on social media. Comment on their articles in a constructive way. Rather than saying something like ‘great blog!’, mention the thing that you found useful in it, or raise a question which shows you appreciate their work. SEO professionals may be ready to assist when you require help if you have left a good first impression on them.
Join an SEO group on LinkedIn, a social networking site for professionals. Some good examples are Search Engine Watch, LinkedSEO, and Search Engine Land. Ask meaningful queries and get answers from other group members. You can check each respondent’s credibility by clicking to their LinkedIn profile. The aforementioned networking tip for Twitter applies when you use this website, as well.